


Living The Best Life

by Daiako (Achrya)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Crying, Depression, Diego and Vanya form a Band, Domestic, Drug Use, Fluff, Healing, Heavy Angst, Incest, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Running Away, Sibling Incest, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Summer Vacation, The Kids Get Jobs and Therapy, The slowest, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-01 18:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17872412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Daiako
Summary: “Oh, Ben, you're still alive. That’s good, it would be pretty shitty to jump into the past but show up after Dad and Luther got you killed, again. If we can get your head out of dad's ass early I think things will work out. You're one of the keys here, I should have realized that sooner.”“What?!” Ben’s voice rose sharply, cracked. Luther frowned hard. “Got me killed? ...I don't have my head up dad's ass!”Klaus' quiet 'Hah' earned him a scorching glare.----There are infinite timelines, infinite possibilities, and Five has been through more than he wants to remember in his quest to save his siblings. In this latest one he decides to take a more...mundane path.





	1. Upset

**Author's Note:**

> Five is a little weird here. He's been through some shit, the PTSD has been multiplied many times over, and the 'outsider' PoV of the chapter doesn't make things any clearer. He'll settle some with time. I tried to capture the irreverent tone of the show here, not sure how it went. 
> 
> Some lines are taken from the show, not because I lack creativity but because I like the idea that some things are always the same (much to Five's dismay.)

When they thought back on it none of them would really remember what they’d been doing when it happened. Just that things had started shaking, flying around as if being yanked by a force they couldn’t see, and then booming thunder and lighting flashing against a darkened sky on what had previously been a clear early summer day brought them running out to the courtyard. Luther burst out of the house first and came skidding to an abrupt halt that had Diego and Ben slamming into his back when they came tumbling after. They were standing, open mouthed with eyes wide as they stared up at the sky when Allison appeared, yelped, and then stopped, mouth dropping open to match her brothers. Klaus was at her heels, bloodshot eyes going round and the tiredness written on his face vanishing at the sight before him. He stumbled to stand next to the others, slipping into the space between Alison and Ben.

Vanya came last, slipping out of the house and pressing herself against the exterior wall.    

Hanging in the air was what they would all later describe as a ‘tear’, for lack of a better descriptor. A jagged spot hovering before them, pulsing with blueish energy that twisted and moved like a heat spot above hot pavement, and all around them a fierce wind had been conjured up and was whipping up gravel, grass, and dust. There was something in the center, a wavering image of some other place with shining sun and a white picket fence.

A stone launched through the air, thrown by Klaus, and with a echoing sucking sound it vanished into the now rippling scene. Allison reached out and grabbed his still raised hand and yanked it down, hissing furiously as she did.

“What is wrong with you? What is that supposed to do?”

Klaus blinked at her then shrugged. “I don’t know! Did one of you have any better ideas.”

“Hell no,” Diego breathed, head tilting back and eyes narrowing. “What the fuck is that?”

“It looks like a temporal anomaly. Or maybe a black hole. One of the two.” Luther offered, drawing looks that ranged from confused to skeptical from his siblings, save Ben who frowned and murmured a soft “It looks like when the tentacles come out.” that no one acknowledged. Luther huffed out a breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “What? I know things!”

“Since when?”

“If you’ve got a problem Diego-”

“Whoa whoa!” Klaus shouted over the fight that would start if they allowed those two to snipe at each other anymore, because surely Luther and Diego would manage to stand at the edge of the fucking apocalypse and still snark and shove their way into oblivion. “Look!”

They looked, falling into stunned silence. A man, older but changing rapidly, seemingly suspended in the tear, arms outstretched and mouth open in a scream they couldn’t hear. Electricity crackled, the wind picked up even more; Vanya had to turn her head to stop her hair from whipping her in the face. Luther reached for Allison, tugging her, and Klaus, back behind him.

“Stay behind me.”

“Yeah, stay behind us.” Diego said, reaching for Ben to move him as well. Ben’s expression melted into something on the edge of irritation but he let himself be pushed behind his brothers, closer to Klaus who latched onto his arm with bruising force.

There was one last rumble of thunder and a yelp as the man was spit forth from the tear, dropped unceremoniously through the air, and starfished onto the ground with a thud. The tear blinked out of existence as if it had never been, the sky lightened, the wind died, and everything went quiet. There was only the sound of the person on the ground groaning softly in pain. The siblings exchanged looks then, as one, the five of them moved forward to the sprawled figure.

It, he, pushed himself up with another groan. He lifted his head as he did, turned familiar dark eyes on them, and made a face.

Klaus raised the hand still holding tightly to Allison. “Hey, question? Does anyone else see number Five, or is that just me?”

He was a little taller than any of them remembered, hair a little longer, face having lost some of its roundness but under dark bangs and a increasingly confused expression as he looked down at himself, it was Five. He patted himself down, frowning at the baggy suit he was wearing, then sighed loudly.

“Shit, again? I really thought- how old do I look to you all?”

More looks were exchanged before Luther offered a questioning “The same age as us? How old do you think you should look?”

Five plucked at his suit. “Who can say? Collapsing timelines, merging time streams, time hopping; it’s all very complicated, obnoxiously so.” A pause, as he looked up at them again, eyes moving over each of them in turn before settling on Ben. He stood up straighter, hands falling, and smiled fleetingly. “Oh, Ben, you're still alive. That’s good, it would be pretty shitty to jump into the past but show up after Dad and Luther got you killed, again. If we can get your head out of dad's ass early I think things will work out. You're one of the keys here, I should have realized that sooner.”

“What?!” Ben’s voice rose sharply, cracked. Luther frowned hard. “Got me killed? ...I don't have my head up dad's ass!”

Klaus' quiet 'Hah' earned him a scorching glare. 

“I hear it was bad, lots of blood, gore, and misplaced parts, so bad you went right into the ‘Things this family never speaks of’ file for seventeen years.” Five said absently as he started towards the house, brushing past his siblings. If he noticed that Ben had become very pale, Luther very red, and the others very confused he didn’t comment on it. “But you’re still alive, and that means you can’t be any older than eighteen, that’s good. If we keep you that way, train Vanya-" ("Train Vanya to do what?" Luther asked.) "Get Klaus clean, teach Diego that trying to be the anti-Luther just makes him more like Luther, and Allison...no, no, you're fine Allison. We should have listened to you right off the bat. And Luther..." He stopped, looked up at Luther with a furrowed brow then shook his head. "Nevermind, I'm not a miracle worker. Where’s the old man? We need to talk and, oh Vanya, there you are. You’re still hiding on the outskirts, we’ll have to fix that, if we start now maybe we can prevent everything this time. His office, maybe? I should get a drink first-” He passed through the doors into the house, leaving the rest of the teens behind with only the faint sounds of his rambling, growing fainter when the door shut after him.

Vanya was the first to move, wide eyes darting from the door to her siblings and back before she darted, rabbit quick, after Five. Like that the spell of shock over them was broken and they all ran after, colliding, pushing, snapping when Luther and Diego both got wedged in the door for a moment, before finally falling through in a heap. Klaus stepped over them with a nervous laugh, Allison and Ben skirted their bodies, and, after a bit more shoving, the two boys regained their footing. By the time they caught up with the group everyone was in the main living room.

Or, to be more accurate, Five and their father, Pogo, and Mother were in the living room, while everyone else hugged the pillars just outside, watching and waiting.

“The giant portrait of me surprises me everytime. You know, Ben gets a statue when he dies. Why don’t I get a statue?” Five was saying, head cocked to the side as he looked up at the painting. He had a glass of brown liquid in his hand; Mother had a bottle in her hand, clutched to her chest, and a strangely subdued smile of her face.

Their father glanced back at the rest of them, hiding very poorly in the shadows, then back at Five. “You weren’t dead, merely lost. It is good to see you, Five. I thought it would take you longer to find your way home.”

“It did, the first time, technically. I guess it's actually longer this time, if you consider accumulated time of my mind... You had died by then, the first time, killed yourself in usual manipulative fashion, and I only had 8 days to stop everything and it was just...not enough time to clean up the massive mess you’d left behind. Thanks, for that by the way.” Five cast a sour look at their father. “It’s not everyone who can say they raised the group that caused the literal destruction of the planet in no less than five timelines I’ve personally visited.”

Hargreeves’ eyebrows lifted some, more emotion than his children could say they usually saw on the man’s face. Another look was cast in their direction before his attention was once again on Five. “Oh?”

“Yes. I’ve done it a few times now. Jumped there, lived it for decades, came back failed to stop it, tried again and just made it happen sooner, lost everything, and now I’m-” Five stopped, emptied the glass in one go, then spun on his heel to glare at their father. “I’m tired of burying my family, old man.”

“Five,” Pogo started, graying brows pinched together. “You need to calm down.”

“I need to-ah.” Five raked a hand through his hair, laughing breathlessly. “If you even knew what happens, how it turns out for you, for all of us, you would see. I’m very calm, considering I just died, again, and had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time, again.”

“What? That made no sense.” Diego whispered loudly.

“It would if you were smarter.” Five was saying before Diego had even stopped speaking then, wincing, shook his head. “Every time. You are...it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Time is falling apart. Collapsing in on itself, because I can’t get this right, and I don’t think it can take another attempt.”

Their father’s expression went pensive. “Come to my office Five. We can talk there, once you are...feeling better.”

“Feeling better.” Five echoed, face twisting like he’d eaten something sour. “Do I look sick to you?”

“I did warn you, if you recall, that jumping through time could have negative effects on your mind. It is impossible to know what you may or may not have seen, or have imagined, and until you are calm there is no way to begin to sort it out.”

Silence fell over them, heavy and uneasy. A clocked ticked, echoed. Five breathed in, exhaled, then nodded once, firmly, before pointing in Vanya’s direction. She shrank back, hiding her face behind her hair. “He’s lying to you, you know? About being ordinary?”

“Number Five-” Their father’s voice was heavy with warning. Five spoke louder, faster, more urgently; a manic energy burned in his eyes. 

“It’s not true. You’re stronger than all of us, except maybe Allison, depending on how you look at it, I’m still running some numbers and Ben-”

“Number Five! That is enough!”

Five twitched. The glass slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, shattering with a soft tinkling. He laughed, hand in his hair again, and shook his head. He looked...tired. Frantic. Furious, all in turn and one after the other before settling on blankness. Complete blankness.

“It is enough. And that’s why I’m going to fix them, all of them, once and for all.” He lifted his chin. “We’re leaving. Get packed, you emotionally stunted assholes, we’re going on vacation.”

No one moved. The very world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for someone to do something, to break the tension so thick it had its own physical presence, to explain something.

Five pressed a hand over his eyes. “Right, none of you are in the rebellion phase just yet. Unfortunate. Hmm, how to do this? I don’t suppose ‘Come with me, or the world will end horribly’ would do it, nothing could ever be that easy with all of you.”

“What do you mean fix us?” Allison asked. “What’s wrong with us?”

“I...I honestly don’t even know where to start with that. Ironically, there just isn’t enough time in all the various potential universes to unravel everything that is wrong with this family.”

Vanya slipped around the pillar, eyes peeking from under her bangs. “Is that...is that true? What you said? I have powers too?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Vanya.” Five turned, vanished, slipped through space to reappear next to her. His face was serious, earnest. “Not about this. Those pills-”

“Number Seven,” Their father said. “You don’t understand.”

“W-wha-wait.” Diego stepped forward, into the room proper. “It’s true? Vanya is-is...you lied?”

Luther was shaking his head. “No. He wouldn’t, would you? Tell them you wouldn't lie to us.”

“Everything I have done has been in your best interests.” Hargreeves said, standing straighter, squaring his shoulders, resolute.

Klaus snorted. “Right. All those trips to the morgue and cemetery have done me wonders, and I know Diego loves all those games of ‘hold your breath or breathe in nerve gas’ you like to play with him.”

“It’s a paralytic gas, actually.” Ben corrected lightly.

“Oh, well.” Said Klaus, eyes rolling skyward.

“You especially, Number Four. Your potential is...you can’t begin comprehend what you’re wasting.”

Klaus laughed, short and toneless, then waved a hand and ducked back, away from his siblings, to slip from the room, ignoring their father calling after him to return. Vanya shifted on her feet, hands in front of her, fingers knitting together anxiously. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, a fragile thing in the loaded atmosphere.  

“I’ll go with you, Five.”

Five blinked. “Huh. ...well shit. Okay, didn't see that coming. Great. Anyone else?”

\----

In the end their father didn’t try to to stop the ones who wanted to leave. He stood, disapproving, in the entryway with Ben, Allison, and Luther standing near, but said nothing as Five, Vanya, Klaus, and uncertain looking Diego (“I hate lying.” He muttered as he fell in line with them.) walked out.

Five was almost disappointed, but not at all surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben/Klaus is an absolute go, but I'm thinking Ben/Klaus/Diego might be fun. 
> 
> I rip on Luther a little but I swear I'm gonna work on his shit just like everyone else. 
> 
> Title shamelessly inspired by "Best Life", ~Cardi B ft Chance the Rapper.


	2. Chapter 2

Griddy’s. Somehow, someway, Five always ended up there, sitting hunched over a cup of coffee, wondering what his next move would be. He’d lost count of how many times he’s started another failed attempt this way, which was exactly why he’d come through and stashed some supplies last time the Commission had him working in the area. Griddy’s hadn’t been Griddy’s yet, just an empty lot full of _potential and dreams_ and fuck him if there wasn’t some kind of metaphor for him sneaking around the place late at night and popping down in the sewer underneath to blast out a chunk of the wall with some handy explosives and shoving all his crap in the hole in all of that.

It would probably relate to his father and siblings, as most things did.

But metaphors weren’t his strong suit so he put that aside as he carefully extracted what he needed and jumped back up to the surface where his siblings were waiting. They were next to the door, heads ducked down and hands shoved in the pockets of their matching ugly green jumpsuits in an attempt to look inconspicuous. It was not working at all. The works instead were huddled around the counter, heads tilted together and pointing, the family of four who drifted past them to go inside didn’t bother pretending not to stare, and there was a cop in a booth watching them through a window.

Five winced as he, still in his oversized suit (though not as bad as the first jump, when he’d been thirteen, or the few jumps after that before he’d managed to fix the issue) walked over to them. He supposed he wasn’t exactly blending in either but at least he had an excuse! He was staging an actual coup against his father, as one sometimes does when their father was made of evil and lies, and couldn’t very well have gone up to his room to grab his things.

Also none of that stuff would have fit anyway. Whatever age he was had seen it’s major growth spurt already which meant he was, at least, taller than Vanya now. But not as broad as he’d been as an adult, which brought him back to his ill fitting suit.  

These three however!

“You look like escaped cult members.”

Diego frowned, Vanya ducked her head further, shoulders lifting up past her ears, and Klaus giggled and shrugged. “You aren’t looking all that amazing yourself, Five. Very Old Man yells at the Clouds, I’m just saying.”

Five looked down at his suit. What was that supposed to mean?

“We don’t exactly have a lot of normal clothes, or have you forgotten?” Diego added.

Five squinted up at his brother then, rolling his eyes, nodded. That was true enough. Their father liked things regimented and uniform, liked them to be identical little soldiers in his personal army, and when Five had gone on his Worst Idea Ever trip into the future he’d had one pair of jeans and a polo shirt, hidden under a floorboard, to his name for the sole purpose of sneaking out to Griddy’s at night. Even if their dad hadn’t been an oddly controlling jerk, it wasn’t like any of them had been drowning in allowance money. Just coming out for a dozen donuts and milk once a month had meant pulling all their funds for the bus fare and tab.

Allison had been an exception, able to walk into a store and get what she wanted with just a few whispered words. Which, in hindsight, should have been a sign that she was a little too free and loose with her power but, well, they weren’t exactly raised to be the most morally aware of people.

“We’ll fix that after this.” He said, pushing his way into the store.

His siblings followed, quiet shuffling spectors at his heels just as they’d been on the walk to the bus stop, on the ride to Griddy’s, and when they’d tried to argue they should come along when he went to retrieve his stuff.  He got it, they were a little shell shocked by his return and the major bombs he’d dropped in their laps and he guessed the running away thing too, but the quiet was unnerving. Klaus, at least, was never quiet. The more freaked out he was the louder he got, and the more stupid jokes he liked to tell.

He knew they had questions, he could all but see them on their depressingly easy to read faces, but so far no one had said a word.

It was unnerving. Were his teenage siblings really so willing to hold their tongues and wait? It was hard to imagine after spending so much time with them as adults. The adult thems, the ones who had splintered apart and stopped talking for the better part of a decade, would have been all over him, demanding answers, arguing, and basically driving him to wish he hadn’t come to them at all.

But in the end he always came back to them, didn’t he? He told himself not to but he couldn’t help himself, even the times he’d decided to go it alone, to prevent things without all the conflict that came from his siblings presence, he found himself invariably drawn to them. No matter how many times he found himself looking down at their dead, mangled bodies he couldn’t stop himself anymore than he could just accept death. Was that what family was, setting himself up to feel like someone had shoved a hand right into his chest and pulled out his insides time and time again, to dream about waxy cold skin, faces twisted in fear and shock, about eyes gone milky and dull in death every night and wake up screaming for-

“Hello.” At the counter the two waitresses on duty scattered as soon as they entered and the one behind the counter plastered on a broad, but transparently fake, smile when he stepped up to her. She didn’t show any signs of recognition but that was expected. Their fame had, from what he gathered, started to wane when he vanished and trips to Griddy’s had stopped around the same time. “What can I get you kids today?”

Five looked back at his siblings, eyebrow lifting. They exchanged looks; Diego and Vanya looked varying degrees of hesitant and Klaus, with his bloodshot eyes and lank hair, curious.

“...One of the Elvis bars.” Klaus said after a beat. “And a cup of coffee.”

“Just a cinnamon bun. And milk.” Diego added the last part with a defensive look in Klaus’ direction; Klaus grinned fleetingly.

Vanya shifted nervously and shook her head. “Umm. Nothing. I don’t. Need anything.”

Five blinked at her then turned back to the woman. “Two Elvis, two peanut butter oreo, two-” What had Vanya liked? Why was it so hard to remember her when he thought of their trips to Griddy’s? What had she- “Boston cream pie, two gooey butter, two cinnamon coffee cake swirl, two buttermilk bars, and two marshmallow and peanut butter. Three black coffees, two glasses of milk, one water and to be left alone.”

“Please.” Vanya said, peeking around Five to offer the woman an apologetic smile.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise and her smile faltered before returning in full force. She nodded, hastily rang them up and watched, eyebrows climbing towards the sky when he fished a wad of bills out of his pocket to pay. Klaus leaned over his shoulder and whistled. Five grimaced and pushed his brother away with a palm to the face and only just bit back a comment about how Klaus shouldn’t bother trying to lift his cash unless he wanted a knife through his hand.

He was going to be nicer this time around.

Hopefully.

He was going to give it a genuine shot. He needed to, for the fate of the world which, if he was being strictly honest, he cared about far less then the fate of his family. He acknowledged that was pretty terrible of him and yet, all the same, he felt how he felt. He’d once considered, seriously, stopping them all from being born and adopted, snuffing out their mothers before the mass spontaneous births could take place but in the end that was the one thing he knew he could never do, fate of the world be damned.

He was risking the whole timestream for them, knew it, and was so past feeling guilty or concerned or anything except tired.

Exhausted.

They took the table furthest from the door, tucked back in the corner near the bathroom and away from all the other patrons. Everyone stayed quiet as the tray of donuts was brought, drinks set down, and coffee poured, but the minute their waitress was gone all eyes were on him, and intensely focused, though Klaus did so with half a donut crammed into his mouth.

Five thought about the thin, ravaged form of his brother in the future, made thin by stress, drugs, and a trip to a literal warzone, and found himself...pleased that his brother was eating with such gusto.

The worst of Klaus’ addiction hadn’t happened yet. There was still time to make things better. Not fix, according to a few self help books he’d read while settling on his new path, because people weren’t fucking cars, you didn’t replace parts and make them as good as new, you couldn’t sand down or fill in all the grooves and dings, couldn’t paint over the repaired damage to hide it. But he could intervene now, try to stop the worse, stop his siblings from destroying themselves and the world with them.

Vanya, he knew, was not the only threat. It had to be all of them, together, who changed or things would end the same as they always did. Death. Betrayal. Destruction. Regret.

Failure.

He was so tired of failure.

“Alright, so, where were you? How do you know about Vanya? What was that stuff about Ben dying? What’s going on? What’s your plan?” Diego rattled off rapid fire, body twisting towards Five.

Who took a bite of his donut and groaned in pleasure at the cloying sweet, salty taste. The first few jumps he’d been too busy to enjoy anything other than an unhealthy amount of liquor, thinking himself too old and jaded to stop and indulge in anything else, but he’d left all that behind. Who cared if anyone saw him eating a shit ton of sticky, almost grossly sugary treats when he’d seen the whole world end time and time again?

He finished the donut in two more bites, picked up the second,looked across the table at Vanya, pointedly ignoring Diego’s frustrated huff, and held out his free hand. She stared back, brow furrowing in confusion.

“You brought your pills right? Can I have them? All of them, preferably.”

“Oh. Yes?” She said, reaching into the small bag she’d brought with her. A moment later two orange bottles where being place into his hand. “Here. But why?”

He squinted at the label, making note of the doctor's name (Eve Sharger), and the absolutely nonsensical prescription name, before unscrewing both lids. He eyed the pills inside, nondescript and unassuming, nodded to himself, then upended the full bottle into the glass of water sitting in the middle of the table. Vanya shrieked and jumped to her feet, hands clapping over her mouth. Five poured the second, mostly empty bottle, out as well.  

“What the fuck?” Diego demanded. Klaus’s donut dropped from his open mouth and hit the counter with a soft plop.

“What a waste.”

The shop was quiet, unnaturally and echoingly so, and yet not nearly as quiet as the end of the world, where nothing but particularly stubborn bugs remained, where clocks didn’t tick, no one breathed, and the tense silence of the confused and uncomfortable would have been a gift. Five relished the silence, drank it up, because at least the world wasn’t one big flaming graveyard, strewn with the bodies of the dead.

Five had gone to Griddy’s in the first future, stumbled there in a daze, and found it’s ceiling half caved in and the windows blown in. People were there, bodies charred black and bent by the force of whatever blast had hit them (He knew what it had been now but at the time it had all been so incomprehensible.) but still sitting in their booths or at the counter, hands forever curved around the shape of mugs. Frozen, until decomp set in.

It had been so quiet there, so quiet that he hadn’t been able to dredge up memories of them eating donuts and laughing with guilty, giddy pleasure after sneaking out, without them being muffled, stangled, by the scene before him. He hadn’t been able to dream about those rare good times without the overlap of what Griddy’s became. He was sure, in a stupid and emotional way that came with a bounding heart and twisting stomach, that if he turned he would find not the stares of people but the empty charred eyes of corpses.

Five leaned back and took another bite of his donut, chewing placidly as Vanya’s usually blank expression cracked like a window caught in a shockwave, and ran the gamut from shock to hurt to confusion back to hurt and finally morotification as she realized she was the center of attention. She went red up to the tips of her ears and quickly sat back down, hands coming up to cover her face. Five couldn’t recall ever seeing her blush before or, really, showing much emotion at all. She was sweet and kind, the only one of his siblings he could imagine leaving lights on and snacks out for him long after he’d jumped into the future, but she had always been so stoic and distant, easily brushed aside and forgotten because she was barely there at all. He’d never noticed how very opposed those two things were in a person, and had never thought to question anything about it.

“These are what’s keeping your powers suppressed.” He tapped the glass; the water was turning milky white as the pills began to dissolve. Her eyes widened slightly. “In a few days we can start working on teaching you control.” 

It was possible. She wasn’t a child who didn’t understand she wasn’t hurting people now, nor an adult with decades of pain fueling her. It was possible. He would make it happen.

“Wait, seriously? Dad was drugging Vanya?” Klaus asked, a skepticalness on his face better suited for one who hadn’t been locked up and tortured by the man in question. “...and he won’t even let me smoke in the house. Rude.”

“That’s because he wants you to use your powers, dumbass.” Five snapped without really meaning it. Klaus let out a soft “oh yeah” and shoved what was left of his donut into his mouth. “Vanya, do you even know what these are for? Depression, anxiety, ADD? Have you ever even seen this Doctor Sharger?”

“You know I haven’t.” She mumbled, eyes darting back to the glass. “We don’t see outside doctors.”

“So how did someone you’ve never met diagnosis you?” Five asked. “How do you even know they exist, and this isn’t just some shit the Old Man cooked up in the basement, next to the giant noise canceling solitary confinement cell he’s got down there for you, and it probably cleaning out and getting ready as we speak.”

Vanya went from bright red to white as a sheet, hands gripping the edge of the table so fiercely her nails were cutting into the formica tabletop. The table rattled and the light directly above them whined as it flickered unhappily. Five eyed it warily.

“ _What?”_

“I mean, come on Diego, that does sound like something he’d have.” Klaus waved away their brother’s shock. “We already know locking us up doesn’t bother him.”

“I...but…” the rest of what Diego had to say was lost in half finished mumbled down at the tables surface, not meant for them to hear or comment on until he had a better handle on himself. At least that’s what Five assumes was best. Maybe. Hopefully.

Once upon a time he’d snickered at Two’s speech issues. He knew now that was because he was an irredeemable shithead with an superiority complex, and any chance to show up Diego and Luther, their father’s most Useful, couldn't be passed up. They’d all been chasing something, and some had been willing to crawl over each other to get it, whatever it was that *It* was. He wasn’t sure yet, what the point had been, why he’d bothered studying and pushing himself to the breaking point, suffered headaches and nose and ear bleeds when he ignored his limits, why he’d bother trying at all when he’d never really liked all that hero shit to begin with. And where had all that effort gotten him, but alone in a hellscape of a future, chasing cockroaches and drowning himself in vodka at thirteen, bouncing through timelines, pushing himself to his limits, and suffering.

“How do you know all this anyway?” Klaus asked, eyeing the water glass with a gleam in his eye Five didn’t like. He moved the glass further from Klaus, ignoring his offended huff.

“I was in the future. It’s shit by the way.”

Klaus’ face lit up. “Called it!”

“Every time.” Five said, smiling a smile he didn’t feel. “But I’m talking apocalyptic hellscape, people turned to ash where they stand no survivors, scorched earth, end of all things shit. I was there for...a very long time. Then I came back, to right before it happens, to stop it. That was my first jump, you were all thirtyish, breathtakingly fucked up in a bunch of different but oddly similar ways, and couldn’t manage to get your shot together long enough to stop the whole end of the world thing. We failed, the world ended, so I jumped us all somewhere else to regroup. Didn’t work, we couldn’t fix what was already so...broken, we died, I started over.”

As it turned out adding causing the end of the human race to Vanya’s already fragile mental state wasn’t something a bunch of assholes like them were in state to fix. She’d woken up, lashed out in fear and anger, and he’d watched all his siblings be torn apart in the razor sharp waves of her power. He’d managed to move between the waves, had managed to get his hands on her, had managed to-

He shoved the rest of the donut in his mouth and reached for another. Chew, chew, swallow, while picking bits of icing off the next. “I tried again, a little further back, thinking if I had more time but it didn’t- I stopped one thing and started another. And another. And another. I even went all the way back, to when we were born, figured I could just kill our mothers just before they gave birth but then I thought about it and what would stop whatever happened from happening to other women and ending up with the same problem in different ethnic flavors, and make the us who was now not us but might still be us, fundamentally, if Hargreeves got to them-slash-us harder to track down in the end-“

“What the fuck?” Klaus whispered.

“SO then I figured I’d just kill us all after we were born. Killing a bunch of infants would be pretty easy, it’s not like any of us could fight back then and our mothers didn’t mind selling us to some weird jerk so I doubt they would have cared and, by the way, have you ever thought about the unfortunate implications of _selling_ infants to a rich eccentric?” He stabbed a finger into his donut and sighed. “I couldn’t do it. Kill you all like that, I just...you were an ugly baby, by the way, Two, and even though you grow up to be a self righteous, misguided, prick with daddy issues, it was just cruel to kill you while you were still so ugly.”

Diego scoffed. “I was _not_ an ugly baby. Musta had me confused with Luther.”

Vanya stares at him with wide, shocked eyes. “You were...you wanted to kill us?”

“The thought occurred. We destroy the world, every time. Each of us, in some way, are capable of wiping out all intelligent life on this planet. Even Luther, which was a shock...not you though. Yet.” He squinted at Diego who shrugged as if to say ‘well yeah, how would I.’ “I was feeling pragmatic for a time, better to destroy the acorn before it becomes a tree with roots that take over and strangle everything else, you see? Because We, all of us, acorn eventually and it’s a problem. But I don’t think killing us, or keeping us from meeting each other is the answer to that problem.”

He slammed a hand on the table and leaned in, meeting each of his siblings eyes and holding their gazes for a moment. They looked...confused. Worried. Doubtful. Scared. Before he could have taken that to mean they couldn’t help and turned away from them to do everything on his own, but not now. Not again.

He couldn’t do this alone.

“The answer is the fix us before we become so irreversibly messed up that destroying the world is an inevitable conclusion.” He said, settling back into his seat and picking up his coffee. “So I’ve found us a therapist. She’s not aware of it yet, but in another timeline she specializes in children and young adults with ‘abilities’, and especially the ones born that day. You know, the ones who aren’t us and weren’t strangled by their horrified mothers or abandoned to die at birth. And I think I have a place to stay, I’ll have to check the lease and inheritance rights to...myself from myself and make sure If was this timeline, they all starts to blur and condense after a while, but. I have a plan.”

“...Five.” Vanya reaches over to him, touched the back of his hand with trembling fingers. “All of this...are you okay?”

He blinked. “Yes? Why? What makes you think I’m not?” No one said anything. He sipped his coffee, eyebrows lifting, then shrugged again. “You think I’m crazy, that’s fine, you always do. But right now I have the funds and a place to stay, and Dad is a nutcase who should be in jail for child trafficking and abuse, so you might as well stick with me anyway.”

“He’s not wrong.” Klaus said cheerfully.

“Great.” Five said, before a skeptical Diego or troubled looking Vanya could speak up. “First thing, you need clothes. You can’t go around looking like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Five sounds way less manic and crazy...because from his POV he isn’t any of those things. Klaus, Vanya, and Diego probably disagree... 
> 
> ——  
> Next chapter: A new home and an attempt to figure out how normal people...normal.


End file.
